Dangerous Ways
by Love Gordon
Summary: [After Viridian Wand & Amulet of Houle] What really happened to Hermione the night her daughter was kidnapped? And just how far will she go to stay alive?
1. Dreams

**Dangerous Ways: _Dreams_** by Love Gordon.

Dreams. She is wallowing in dreams.

The day her daughter was born, two daughters, blurring together now. She remembered the eldest – she had been such a quiet baby. There was Ron, holding her hand, and Caroline, Caroline bending over her, taking away the pain. Caroline was dead by the time her second daughter came into the world…

She had known it from the day of her younger daughter's conception. The same itchy-magical feeling tickled her spine. Why had it been this way for her? She, of all people, destined to bear not one, but two Maidens. Sometimes she felt she had been cheated. She would never be their equal. And her eldest daughter would never know her. Never.

Severus, his arms around her, the baby, that second time. And oh – bitterest thing of all, most terrible thing in her life – her eldest daughter had come. Come, as Caroline had, told them the secret she already knew. Why couldn't she have had a normal daughter? What a cruel hand Fate had dealt her; first Mica, then Alia. Lost to her, the both of them.

Not so much dreams, really, just recollections. Nightmares.

She could never tell anyone these things. Caroline was dead – _damn Caroline, damn Harry, damn all of them_! Severus loved Alia, his baby princess, more than life itself – _forget what you were, forget the images of Ron and Mica, twenty-odd years ago_. Remus, she couldn't bear to burden with these terrible thoughts – _and you always were such a Daddy's girl_. 

Some days she would stare out the window for hours, stare out and think, _Hogwarts is a prison_. She wished she could run away, but she truly hadn't the heart. How could she ask Severus to leave his fortress? How could she abandon him or Alia? And underneath all that, there was the fact that her eldest daughter was there. Mica was teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. That kept her there, if nothing else.

All these dreams slowly chip away at her, polish her, make her clean and pure. She is waiting, always waiting…


	2. A Cycle of Horrors

**Dangerous Ways: _A Cycle of Horrors_** by Love Gordon

"Hermione!"

It echoes in her ears.

How can she ever forget that last cry? That last, final cry against the darkness that swept him under. She remembers the night, sees his blue eyes closing as the sun rises.

"Hermione!"

Snape has saved her; in her heart she knew Remus would never let them leave Hogwarts grounds without a guard. But Snape? No matter. She is alive, by the grace of an antidote to the poison that horrible Lowell woman gave them. But Ron… why couldn't he have been saved? _Why couldn't my baby be safe?_

She leans her head against the wall in Caroline's office. She is aware of Remus talking… of all his words flowing into a single, unending ribbon of sound in her head. Snape has his arms around her shoulders, to keep her upright. For that she is thankful; she is so tired, she would like to slide into the ground.

"Hermione!"

Remus keeps talking… she hears the words _Snape… partner dead… used a Glamourie… she should be… _

Caroline cuts him off. _Harry… Voldemort… discovered the bodies… no one knows yet…_

She lets the words swallow her.

"Hermione!"

She has to force the words out. "That's not my name," she says. "Not any longer."


	3. The Dying Swan

**Dangerous Ways: _The Dying Swan_** by Love Gordon

In a just world, she would be the dead one.

With the tip of her shoe, she scuffs away the leaves that are already starting to cover the gravestone. Autumn leaves, fallen from trees preparing for winter. Dead leaves.

The stone is grey marble, just as her husband's is. She smiles; imagine, Remus being tasteful for once? A rare dream. But for Ananda, anything.

She reaches down to touch the inscription, feels the emptiness of engraving beneath her fingers. The marble is so cold.

Ananda Ceres Lupin, February 20, 1990 – August 3, 2006 

No one will ever see this secret tombstone but she, Caroline, and Remus. Possibly Snape, someday, if Remus ever lets him.

This world isn't just, that she knows. Ananda is dead, a dying swan. She had been so very _alive_ that death seems impossible for her.

Ananda was some sort of divine being sent down from the heavens. Ananda had given a gift so precious to her that her breath always catches, just thinking about it. The Lupins have always been so generous, the both of them. Ananda shouldn't lie here, shouldn't be so cold.

Then again, as she brushes her russet curls away from her face, she reflects that Ananda is not, after all, quite dead yet.


	4. Windows

Dangerous Ways: _Windows_ by Love Gordon 

Even now, she still catches herself looking out windows. It's not that… she's so desperate, not now, never again. She just likes to dream of what might have been, had things gone differently that night.

What if they had never left Hogwarts, that fatal eve? She'd still be married to Ron, they'd be safe, and she would know her daughter. But Voldemort, perhaps, might still roam the globe. No, no, better to forget the "what if…"s. Better to forget.

But all the same, she catches herself dreaming at odd moments, when she should be grading Arithmancy papers. She finds herself looking to the sun, to the sky, for answers. Lies. 

And now she is doing it again, looking out into the cool, serene blue of afternoon. It is a little bit helpful, really; she feels as if she can breathe a little better in these moments. It is easier to forget the pains of the past when she is submerged in fantasy.

It is easier to forget that she _did_ have a past, once.

Alia climbs up on her lap, looks at her quizzically. "Mommy," her daughter asks, "Why are you so sad?"

She smiles, hugs Alia. "Mommy isn't sad," she says gently. "Mommy's just thinking..."


	5. Illusion

**Dangerous Ways: _Illusion_** by Love Gordon

She slips off the dress. The white silk clings to her, rustling plaintively, letting her escape its encumbrance reluctantly. And then she takes off the necklace.

The illusion wavers uncertainly for a moment; it is, after all, a Glamourie that has been fueled by magic and the best Mask potion money can buy for fourteen years. It finally shudders, and dissolves.

The first thing she realises, looking in the mirror, is how thin she is. Odd. Otherwise, no one would know she is forty. She looks much as she did at twenty-six, the day she put the Masking necklace on and drank that first-of-many-potions. _Magic has its benefits._

She hears the soft creak of the door; turns. Her husband of three hours stands in the doorway. After a moment he enters the room, locking the door behind him. "I didn't know you were still so beautiful," he murmurs.

At that, she laughs. "I have never been beautiful, Severus," she says ruefully. He smiles, shakes his head.

"You will always be beautiful. In my eyes."

In the following hours she forgets another long-ago honeymoon, another long-ago wedding.


	6. Guilt I

**Dangerous Ways: _Guilt I_**by Love Gordon

She's in her office, peacefully indulging in this month's copy of _Theory_, when Alia gets up from her play with the Quidditch figures Severus gave her for Christmas. "_Alia_," she begins, but her nearly-three-year-old daughter has already impetuously set foot outside the door. With a reluctant sigh, she sets her much-awaited rest as well as _Theory_ aside, making to follow her Alia. _How did she and Severus spawn such an outgoing child?_

More concisely, she wonders how she and Ron created such a singular one as Mica.

She pushes that out of her mind, for the moment, as she wanders down the great stone halls of Hogwarts in search of her daughter. Eventually, she finds Alia, in the staff room, but that is not so much to her surprise… for she tends to gravitate toward the two other Hogwarts wee ones. Mica's children.

Gabriel, who is just a few months younger than Alia, is sitting starry-eyed with rapture on the floor, listening to his mother as she reads a story to him. Mica is seated in one of the great gold chairs near the fireplace, holding her younger son, Charles. Despite the fact he is only a year old, he listens attentively as well.

She watches the vignette from the shadows outside the door, silent as can be. Alia wanders over to Gabriel to sit neck to him… and she is surprised when her daughter does not speak, does not shatter the façade. Instead Alia merely sits, spellbound. 

It is only then that she sees the resemblance between all of them. Alia's nephews are both almost mirror images of Draco, except for Gabriel's milk-glass blue eyes. But Alia herself…

The resemblance is there, in the swift, clean curve of their jaw lines, the slight upturning of their noses, the elfin point of their chins, and the thinness that all came first in her. Mica's thinness tends toward a fragile delicacy, like the thin loveliness of a flower, while Alia's is all slenderness and leanness. _But who wouldn't have expected that, with Severus for a father?_ Still, they could be mother and daughter; for all that Mica is dainty and golden where Alia is sleek and raven-haired.

She turns away from the doorway, stifling the terrible, irrational sob that is rising up in her lungs with her hand – a hand that is just as fine-boned beneath its Glamourie.

As her body is wracked with silent tears, she slides down against the wall.

That's where Severus finds her.


	7. Guilt II

**Dangerous Ways: _Guilt II_**by Love Gordon

He gives her a long, appraising look that is not unlike those cruel looks he gave her as a schoolgirl – only this one has compassion, if not warmth.

She gazes into her husband's brown eyes – how long, she isn't sure – but when he breaks that gaze she feels strangely empty. _Is this solace?_

Absently she listens to him ask Mica if she'd keep Alia for the night in that velvety, smooth voice she so loves. Mica gives him the affirmative, sounding a little mischevious. She almost laughs at that, the distance between her daughter's imagination and the truth. _Almost as wide as the distance between her and her daughter, isn't it?_ She's not laughing when he comes out.

Severus glances at her but a moment before he swoops down and picks her up, and she's too surprised to do anything except look at his oddly impassive face as he strides down to their rooms in the dungeons. When he reaches their destination, he flings the doors open in an unusually devil-may-care manner until he reaches the bedroom, where he sits her firmly, albeit gently, on the bed. She closes her eyes.

He cups her face in his hands. "What's going on, Hermione?" he asks. She loves the sound of his velvet voice saying her name; he's never needed any other endearment for her.

Perhaps because of this, she finds herself speaking, at first slowly, and then faster, of all her nightmares, of all that she has lost, of all that torments her every second she looses focus. Of her daughters, and how she is lost to them. Always.

When she is done, she expects some… terrible force to descend on her, the earth to quake, _something_ to change, and not for the better.

Severus kisses her forehead, solemnly, and says, "I love you. Do you understand?" She nods. "Then set yourself free," he says, "Let go. _It was not your fault_."

For the second time that day, she looks deeply into his eyes, and she sees absolution, a key to her prison. She says nothing, a long moment of silence stretching out… then she leans forward and kisses him.

Tears run down her face as they make love in the big oak bed, but they are tears of healing, and she knows that this is freedom, this is light…


	8. Affirmation of Light

**Dangerous Ways: _Affirmation of Light_** by Love Gordon

She watches it for the second time; but this is not as moving as the first, with Caro's slim elegance and gentleness. This is an echo of a nightmare – everything's loveliness has slipped into a strange, sinister beauty.

Mica smiles –the light blanching her face and dimming the honey-gold hair to a dull platinum. The rich metallic ruby red of her lips shines in the golden glow. Mica kneels in supplication on the floor of that vast, vast room; alone in the circle of light but for the small bundle. Alone-but-not-alone.

"Morgan," her eldest daughter says, "Give me a blessing."

A cool wind blows through the room.

The bundle is silent.

"You shall be affirmed as a Future Bearer," the ancient words fall easily from Mica's lips, "By Morgan's rite; as was Nimue affirmed at her birth; as were all Future Bearers affirmed at the time of their rite."

She watches in the shadows, her husband's arm around her waist, sees her eldest daughter dip her hand into the great glittering goldness that lies in a large, font-like table. Mica picks up the bundle, then ceremonially shakes the slippery gold droplets onto the head of the baby within.

"Alia Ea Snape, I pronounce you Future Bearer, by the Wand of Morgan, Mother of all who sit at her table; I bestow on you the guardianship of that Wand; I grant you the task of forever maintaining the Balance. May Morgan's power forever protect you from whatever harm comes you way; may those who Protect your Wand forever remain loyal and vigilant. Alia Ea Snape, you are a Daughter of Morgan, and my Sister."

Her eldest daughter smiles fondly down at her youngest, suddenly shattering the odd darkness that has seeped into her. Despite the fact that Mica is twenty years older than Alia – despite the fact that Mica is eight months pregnant with Alia's nephew - 

They _are_ sisters, she realizes.

And she is happy, for the moment.


	9. Revisiting

Dangerous Ways: _Revisiting_ by Love Gordon 

It is eight in the morning, and she is tired, and she is thoroughly sick.

She just lies against the wall for a few minutes until the last of the urges to revisit her dinner have passed. Wisps of her hair – reddish, the charm is on and the potion has already been taken – stick to her face, which is shiny with perspiration. Suddenly, her light cotton robes seem unbearable for the August heat.

"Merlin," she says weakly to the air, "I feel like _shit._"

Severus swings open the door, and she sees his face frown worriedly as he takes in the scene. "Hermione…?"

"Never better," she mutters wearily. "Can't say the same for my supper, though."

He helps her to their bed with a tenderness that he saves only for her, letting her lean on him without comment. She feels better, though, by the time she is lying down on the green-and-black quilts that cover their bed. (A wedding present from Sirius, who had actually been quite decent about her running off and marrying Severus, once he got over the initial fit of apoplexy.)

"I'm going to get Madame Pomfrey," her husband says, and she realizes why he is so upset. Memories of another time when she was horribly sick rush to her mind… _Ron, dying as the sun rose_… but she pushes them away.

"Severus, I'm all right. I'm not dying. I'm just fine." She smiles at him, takes his hand in hers. "Don't worry about me."

"_Hermione,_" he insists, and she smiles up at him, feels that itchy tickle run up her spine, knows that the time and place to tell him is now. They are both ready.

"We're both just fine," she says, moving their joined hands to rest on her stomach. She lets him mull this statement over for a moment.

"Do you mean…?" Severus trails off; flustered, a rare thing for him. "You… I…"

"Do you want this?" she asks him, serious, for the moment.

"Do you?"

"Her name is Alia," she says steadily.

She can almost see the gears in his mind churning. Finally, he nods. And she laughs, letting out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding.

"She'll be brilliant, Severus." Another tickle at the base of her spine; well, perhaps brilliant doesn't quite sum it up as adequately as it should. But it will do for the moment.

Her husband smiles at her. "She'll be beautiful."


	10. Light Scatters

**Dangerous Ways: _Light Scatters_** by Love Gordon

Light is sliding westward over the hills surrounding the castle. It is June, and term has ended. Alia is five now, and out on the Quidditch pitch, playing on her new toy broom with Gabriel.

The Arithmancy classroom and her office are high up in the castle, which is not so convenient as she lives in the dungeons, but today she is thankful. Light spills through the open casement windows. The room is filled with the smells and sounds of summer: green grass, clean air, the joyous bubbling laughter of the children's voices.

Severus has come up from his rooms to keep her company while she tidies up her office, and, as she stands at the window, she turns toward him a little. "Severus?"

He looks up through his silky curtain of black hair, which has slipped over his eyes. "Hmm?"

She smiles at him fondly, realizes that she can barely remember the admittedly intimidating Snape of her youth. All that has been washed away, though the passing of the years. "Let's go away," she says on a whim. "Let's move back to London. Severus, I'm a bloody _doctor_. What the hell am I doing at Hogwarts, teaching Arithmancy? St. Mungo's is dying to have you on staff too, you know."

He stares at her for a moment. "Hermione, are you feeling all right?"

She nods. "Oh-" Suddenly the words pour out of her. "This place is a mausoleum. It's full of memories, of – of Ron, and Harry, and I; Mica… Never mind. You – I wouldn't ask you to leave. It's your home."

To her surprise, he shakes his head. "No – you're right. You've never been happy here. Nor have I. Not really." To her questioning look, he answers, "Did you ever think my time at Hogwarts was pleasant? I was alone with my nightmares – until you came here."

"Remus won't mind if we take the old house; he's on the Continent most of the time, anyway," she decides; the decision is made. "Longbottom Wizarding Primary is only three blocks away, and it's supposed to be one of the best schools in England. Alia will love it."

She turns back to the window, to call her daughter in, and suddenly a fragment of a Muggle song from her youth resurfaces in her mind.

_Like the way life scattered, to be washed away slow._

**_~Finis~_**

Notes: the song in question is The River, copyright 1998 by PJ Harvey and used without permission.

Thanks to everyone whose encouragement has made this story possible. 

(Especially Mom.) – Love Gordon, January 21, 2002


End file.
